Why Aren’t Gigs and Festivals Fun Anymore?

Words: Lauren O’Neill

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You pay between £50 and £150 for a ticket. You wait in a queue which doesn’t move for an hour. You finally get inside the venue and wander about commemorating the occasion with a t-shirt. This costs you £40. You eventually make it to your seat or your entrance (by way of grabbing a drink - that’ll be £10), and you discover that you are either are high up in the nosebleeds or standing on an unsloped floor with a view that will mean you basically spend the night watching the big screen rather than the actual person you’ve come to see. Oh, and you’ll probably end up right next to someone recording the entire thing on their phone to make TikToks nobody will watch.

This is essentially the experience of going to an arena show or a mainstream festival in the year of our Lord 2026, give or take a few specifics. Seeing live music is one of the coolest things we can do as fans - it’s so exciting to watch the artists we pipe into our own ears daily in the flesh, and to celebrate that connection we have to their music alongside them - but these days, there do seem to be more barriers to access, more admin, and more impetus to document the experience rather than actually having it, than ever.

At the risk of sounding a bit “old man yells at cloud,” I’m not sure that this is what concerts and festivals are actually supposed to be like. Aren’t they meant to be… fun? Between rising ticket prices, shortening concert lengths, brand intervention, and social media’s effect on the concert experience, it feels like increasingly, they’re less moments for communion and more business transactions. But how did this happen, and why?
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“While festivals in particular have latched onto music’s place in the experience economy - that is, the fact that we’ll pay more than ever before for “experiences” over material goods, largely because of the cultural capital to be earned by sharing these experiences.”

The short answer, as it always is, is of course the amount of money at stake, which has only got larger and larger as time has gone on. If we look back to the 2010s, as poptimism - the critical wave which saw pop music suddenly taken seriously by the previously snobbish critical class - took hold, the way in which pop music was viewed changed. A pop show suddenly became a cultural spectacle worthy of discussion, and while festivals used to be solely the preserve of more niche genres, as pop became more respected as an art form in its own right - and audiences’ changing tastes in light of this were recognised - concerts, and festivals in particular, became a bigger part of globalised mainstream culture.

As the live music business has boomed, ticket prices have risen, as have merch prices, while festivals in particular have latched onto music’s place in the experience economy - that is, the fact that we’ll pay more than ever before for “experiences” over material goods, largely because of the cultural capital to be earned by sharing these experiences. This has meant that many large festivals have, in a sense, become giant brand activations - offering a sense of organised fun, in environments where the point used to actually be the sense of freedom from the capitalist forces that dominate attendees’ real lives.

There is perhaps no event which defines the commercialisation of the festival quite as much as Coachella. What began as a pretty run-of-the-mill rock festival with about 20,000 people per day in attendance is now a corporate behemoth, with almost as many brand activations as artists performing - with Barbie, Aperol, YouTube, Neutrogena, 818 Tequila, Medicube, Rhode Beauty, Gap, method, Magnum and Dove just a handful of the companies offering “immersive experiences” alongside the music at the festival.

While artists have, for my entire life as a music lover, always done brand deals (think of the iconic Britney Pepsi ads, for example), concerts and festivals feel as though they become less about artistic and spiritual communion when brands are encroaching in this way. Added to the fact that we’re seeing so much of what’s going on on big tours on our phones anyway, and the experience of connecting organically with an artist in the moment feels less worth paying rising ticket prices for.

Though measures are being brought in to combat price gouging, fans are not feeling those changes quickly enough, and while phones are banned from some concerts (think of Harry Styles’ recent Manchester show, which was filmed for Netflix), this doesn’t necessarily make sense when it comes to the practicalities and safety concerns inherent to modern life.

So, how do we get around all of this? We’re not going to stop wanting to go to concerts and festivals, even if the experiences do feel a little dulled these days: they are extremely precious parts of our cultural lives, and at best they can still be totally life-affirming. But perhaps as music fans, it might make sense to direct our resources to the types of concerts and festivals where music is still viewed as a community experience first and a business venture second. While smaller, more DIY music events can and do have their own issues (sometimes including accessibility, and male-dominance in the crowd and onstage), it is worth supporting grassroots music because these are the events where, as listeners, we experience least intervention between ourselves and our access to the music.

But where bigger shows and festivals are involved, those behind them - booking agencies, venue stakeholders, even artists - should acknowledge that the experience has, overwhelmingly, become something to be shown rather than felt. For starters, by making bills better value - with great headliners and support acts - as well as actively working against ticket touting, and ensuring accessibility for all in venues, even those who’ve paid the least to stand, these issues could begin to be addressed. And perhaps if things started to move back in the direction of music as art rather than commerce, big, flashy live shows might actually start to get fun again.